The Foreign Service Journal, March 2012

value of their labor, and the price of food can prove disastrous. The recent worldwide increase in food prices and resultant crises ex- emplify the point. While famine is typically understood as a supply-dri- ven phenomenon that occurs when some shock reduces food produc- tion, the current global food price in- creases are primarily a result of long-term, demand-driven trends — not a reduction in aggregate food supply. These price increases primarily affect urban con- sumers, who depend on markets for food. While full- fledged famines have historically been more common in rural areas, some of those who die of hunger in cities are actually internally displaced persons, who have migrated from rural to urban areas in search for food or employ- ment. Food crises can mutate into famines when prices rise or incomes fall too rapidly and steeply for those living in absolute poverty to absorb the shock. Those who can af- ford sustenance even at higher prices enjoy continued ac- cess, though they may reduce their daily nutritional intake or consume more low-cost, low-calorie foods, as people suffering from the current price increases appear to be doing in many countries. Like food distress generally, famine is not a single event, but unfolds over time, often years. Insidiously, it may not cause any widespread mortality for a year or two, until disease induced by acute malnutrition and weakened immune systems begins taking a massive toll. Compounding the toll of famines, epidemics may break out when refugees leave their homes en masse in search of food, exposing themselves to new environments to which their immune systems are unaccustomed. Coping Mechanisms Those most vulnerable in a food crisis or famine em- ploy various coping mechanisms to survive. Such mech- anisms have predictive value, meaning that their presence in a society may indicate an incipient famine or food cri- sis. While at least 14 such mechanisms may manifest themselves during the various stages of a famine, three of them have dire political and security consequences. First, in most famines, precautionary and speculative withholding of food stocks — hoarding — exacerbates food supply problems. For example, during the 1974 Bangladesh famine, newspaper reports of expected crop damage from severe flooding led to widespread hoarding. This drove markets to anticipate shortages, dou- bling the price of grain between Feb- ruary and June of that year. Famine then ensued as the poor were priced out of the market. When prices increase, large farm- ers withhold surplus crops in hopes of further price in- creases, while small shareholders store food to hedge against soaring market prices. If the price increases are a result of supply failure and individuals are unable to meet their subsistence needs, prices may increase even further. When hungry people discover warehouses of hoarded grain during a famine, they frequently take matters into their own hands and loot the supplies, increasing civil un- rest. Another coping mechanism, which is economically and politically destabilizing, is migration away from the epi- center of food shortages. Teenage boys and men with families are typically the first to migrate in the pre-famine phase, often flocking to urban areas in search of work to support their families. If conditions worsen and famine ensues, entire families often follow, as happened in So- malia 20 years ago and again in 2010 and 2011. Even if the displaced reach refugee camps, they typi- cally find abysmal sanitary conditions. Poor, unaccompa- nied women are subject to physical and sexual violence, and traditional family ties break down. Warlords have taken control of many camps, where they recruit unem- ployed, angry and hungry young men for their armies and militias. Such influxes are also politically destabilizing for host countries, which is why the Kenyan government re- cently sent troops into Somalia to try to open up supply lines to feed people there — leaving its military seriously bogged down. To cite another example, the Iraqi insurgency that began in 2004 was partially fueled by migration of desti- tute young men from rural areas, where the agricultural economy had collapsed even before the war began. Most of these men were living on the streets of large cities and were easily recruited into militias. Similarly, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan reports that a sharp hike in food prices in 2008 con- Rapidly rising food prices drove the Arab Spring at least as much as did demands for political reform. 28 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 1 2 F OCUS